"But the extermination of civilians by aerial bombing of cities during WW2 was also impressively evil. And the (evil) Empire doesn't seem to have lost its taste for genocide, given what’s happening now."
Indeed.
It seems common enough for ideologies, modern or ancient, to believe in the rightness and necessity of the evil they do.
For example, looking back there is written documentation including argument and justification for the horrific forced conversion of the northern Saxons by Charlemagne (Holy Roman Emperor). We can recognise common antecedents even now. In the modern case, my surname sadly associates with the perpetrator of aerial atrocities of revenge with little military gain.
Arnold Toynbee collected studies of past empires, which point up your general point of rise and fall. (And there were dark ages before 'our' dark age.) Perhaps we can distinguish between 'empires' and 'civilisations'? Even now it might be that other existing civilisations will handle the limits to industrialisation better than the recent lead nation and its historical background?
Yes, "Bomber Harris" -- I read the story in Freeman Dyson's book "Disturbing the Universe." He doesn't fault Harris in particular. The whole bomber command was, according to Dyson; "An organization dedicated to killing people and doing the job badly"
Maybe the more correct flag is this one -- The flag of the East India Company was used to represent the East India Company, which was chartered in England in 1600. ???
One might be tempted to label this the FIRST Global Empire, since, once it became possible for an empire to BE global, that empire would eventually be succeeded by others.
But perhaps the dark cloud representing human depletion of global resources has a silver lining. Eventually, barring some miraculous technological breakthrough, the energy to power any system that is truly global in scope will no longer be available. Windmills and solar collectors are incapable of powering the energy-intensive world-conquering military organizations and the global control grid needed for that.
Long-distance commerce has outstripped its usefulness. Being able to trade mutually with others far away for things we did not have was a good thing. But now we import things from far away that could be produced locally, an energy-wasting process that is viewed as desirable only by those few who want to arbitrage differences in the cost of labor and the side-stepping of local regulation.
Likewise, wars will again become more localized affairs. And those who say that global governance is good because it would eliminate war are likely wrong, anyway. All global governance will do is ensure that all future wars are CIVIL wars. And there will indeed be conflicts, given that every global governance advocate relies on compulsion to build his "perfect world."
"In a sense, all empires are bad: they tend to be ruthless military organizations that engage in all kinds of massacres, genocides, and destruction."
In a sense, all empires are good: they quell the conflicts between the parts of the empire that would otherwise engage in armed conflicts in a contest for resources and political dominance. They improve infrastructure: the same roads that move armies across the map also facilitate travel for other purposes which supports long-distance commerce and cultural exchange. The collapse of centralized authority leaves a power vacuum which spurs a furious contest for power among warlords and those with raging ambition and a talent for violence, which is why people tend to pine for the good ole days of peace and prosperity which they associate with the previous imperial high.
Fortunately, because empires always inspire envy and resentment, people start predicting their downfall centuries in advance. Like the proverbial stopped clock, eventually, those predictions come to fruition. As they say in tech, "Too early is the same as wrong," but the great thing about predictions of doom is that it doesn't hurt to be wrong. The people hungry for the predictions savor the anticipation of seeing the powerful brought low. They're consuming class conflict revenge porn, not seeking out a clear-eyed forecast upon which to base rational action.
'In a sense, all empires are good". Because they "quell conflict". Indeed. This is something that Hobbes made clear about the lower level of states, and Multi-Level-Selection made clear about ALL levels of organization, from biological cells to Empires or the UN. But there is a difference between an empire and an organization like the UN. The former is a wealth pump that advantages mostly one state, or even one class of people in that state, and the latter (if it weren't for veto power of certain empire-driven states) tries to keep commerce flowing more equally and care for the commons. The Pax Empirica of whatever historical flavor always contains the seeds of war, even as it tries to keep the peace through violence and exploitation.
In addition to these shortcomings of empires, we have a particular shortcoming of capitalism: it seems to destroy/outcompete the lower levels of human organization. Because people don't need their family members, or village/tribe members for goods and services (instead needing factories in far off places and capital-intensive bureaucracies), these levels get de-selected in favor of a soup of individual humans (or even dopamine-seeking parts of.humans, with the attention economy). But these levels are needed for our psychological well-being, as well as for game theoretic reasons having to do with managing complexity and free loading.
So the sense in which all empires are good, is the same sense that heroine is good: a short term benefit, for a terrible cost in the future or in faraway places, that eventually comes back to hurt everyone here and now.
"...But there is a difference between an empire and an organization like the UN. The former is a wealth pump that advantages mostly one state, or even one class of people in that state..."
Yes, judged by that standard, the US is a poor excuse for an empire as it facilitates global free trade over the entire globe, even between its rivals, rather than attempting to monopolize value-added transformations of raw materials. You can tell that it's not a traditional wealth pump empire by the fact that citizens of its client nations enjoy higher standards of living than citizens in the supposedly privileged nation-state at the center of the empire. This is largely because the guiding principle of the USA on the world stage for half a century was to contain the Soviet Union. Now that the USSR is no more, the US is withdrawing from its international commitments, but not cleanly or decisively. If Pax Americana is going to endure for more than a few more decades, it will need to learn to conduct itself like a proper Empire and stop responding to every little provocation and start using its status to redirect a greater share of wealth to its home population.
I was not aware that client states of the US enjoy a higher standard of living, except maybe Qatar and a few other Opec nations, but I am not very knowledgable about this. I thought that until recently (with Qatar modernizing) the US consumed more resources per capita than anyone else. The 5% of the world's population which lives in the US consumed about a quarter of the world's energy, and a third of the world's material resources. Lately things have been going downhill for the US, for sure, due to several factors including dwindling oil reserves and competition from Russia and China and Opec countries.
Why are you advocating for a "proper" (i.e. more violent, extractive, totalitarian) empire? Is it because you see that capitalism by itself is not a sufficient wealth pump, and has leveling, democratizing aspects? You didn't respond to my (non-Marxist) critique of capitalism. Is it because if you only had a choice between capitalism (with the nasty features I outlined in my response above, as well as its beneficial wealth distributing and creating features), and totalitarianism at a global level (as aspired to by the US's competitors), you would choose the latter, if the US became more totalitarian?
Someone left the word salad out of the fridge again!
Seriously, @aaron faes, some punctuation might help you make your point better. Absent a period or comma now and then, I can't make much sense of this.
"But the extermination of civilians by aerial bombing of cities during WW2 was also impressively evil. And the (evil) Empire doesn't seem to have lost its taste for genocide, given what’s happening now."
Indeed.
It seems common enough for ideologies, modern or ancient, to believe in the rightness and necessity of the evil they do.
For example, looking back there is written documentation including argument and justification for the horrific forced conversion of the northern Saxons by Charlemagne (Holy Roman Emperor). We can recognise common antecedents even now. In the modern case, my surname sadly associates with the perpetrator of aerial atrocities of revenge with little military gain.
Arnold Toynbee collected studies of past empires, which point up your general point of rise and fall. (And there were dark ages before 'our' dark age.) Perhaps we can distinguish between 'empires' and 'civilisations'? Even now it might be that other existing civilisations will handle the limits to industrialisation better than the recent lead nation and its historical background?
Yes, "Bomber Harris" -- I read the story in Freeman Dyson's book "Disturbing the Universe." He doesn't fault Harris in particular. The whole bomber command was, according to Dyson; "An organization dedicated to killing people and doing the job badly"
the flag is totally wrong and it is technology and capitalism, and not America as the “Empire”. Read 1992 Michael Hardt Antonio Negri book “Empire”
Maybe the more correct flag is this one -- The flag of the East India Company was used to represent the East India Company, which was chartered in England in 1600. ???
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_East_India_Company
True. A more iconic representation of dominion based on global robbery and pilfer!
Ps. that is by no means saying the Spanish and Portuguese did not begin the process 150 years earlier, since 1492.
One might be tempted to label this the FIRST Global Empire, since, once it became possible for an empire to BE global, that empire would eventually be succeeded by others.
But perhaps the dark cloud representing human depletion of global resources has a silver lining. Eventually, barring some miraculous technological breakthrough, the energy to power any system that is truly global in scope will no longer be available. Windmills and solar collectors are incapable of powering the energy-intensive world-conquering military organizations and the global control grid needed for that.
Long-distance commerce has outstripped its usefulness. Being able to trade mutually with others far away for things we did not have was a good thing. But now we import things from far away that could be produced locally, an energy-wasting process that is viewed as desirable only by those few who want to arbitrage differences in the cost of labor and the side-stepping of local regulation.
Likewise, wars will again become more localized affairs. And those who say that global governance is good because it would eliminate war are likely wrong, anyway. All global governance will do is ensure that all future wars are CIVIL wars. And there will indeed be conflicts, given that every global governance advocate relies on compulsion to build his "perfect world."
"In a sense, all empires are bad: they tend to be ruthless military organizations that engage in all kinds of massacres, genocides, and destruction."
In a sense, all empires are good: they quell the conflicts between the parts of the empire that would otherwise engage in armed conflicts in a contest for resources and political dominance. They improve infrastructure: the same roads that move armies across the map also facilitate travel for other purposes which supports long-distance commerce and cultural exchange. The collapse of centralized authority leaves a power vacuum which spurs a furious contest for power among warlords and those with raging ambition and a talent for violence, which is why people tend to pine for the good ole days of peace and prosperity which they associate with the previous imperial high.
Fortunately, because empires always inspire envy and resentment, people start predicting their downfall centuries in advance. Like the proverbial stopped clock, eventually, those predictions come to fruition. As they say in tech, "Too early is the same as wrong," but the great thing about predictions of doom is that it doesn't hurt to be wrong. The people hungry for the predictions savor the anticipation of seeing the powerful brought low. They're consuming class conflict revenge porn, not seeking out a clear-eyed forecast upon which to base rational action.
'In a sense, all empires are good". Because they "quell conflict". Indeed. This is something that Hobbes made clear about the lower level of states, and Multi-Level-Selection made clear about ALL levels of organization, from biological cells to Empires or the UN. But there is a difference between an empire and an organization like the UN. The former is a wealth pump that advantages mostly one state, or even one class of people in that state, and the latter (if it weren't for veto power of certain empire-driven states) tries to keep commerce flowing more equally and care for the commons. The Pax Empirica of whatever historical flavor always contains the seeds of war, even as it tries to keep the peace through violence and exploitation.
In addition to these shortcomings of empires, we have a particular shortcoming of capitalism: it seems to destroy/outcompete the lower levels of human organization. Because people don't need their family members, or village/tribe members for goods and services (instead needing factories in far off places and capital-intensive bureaucracies), these levels get de-selected in favor of a soup of individual humans (or even dopamine-seeking parts of.humans, with the attention economy). But these levels are needed for our psychological well-being, as well as for game theoretic reasons having to do with managing complexity and free loading.
So the sense in which all empires are good, is the same sense that heroine is good: a short term benefit, for a terrible cost in the future or in faraway places, that eventually comes back to hurt everyone here and now.
"...But there is a difference between an empire and an organization like the UN. The former is a wealth pump that advantages mostly one state, or even one class of people in that state..."
Yes, judged by that standard, the US is a poor excuse for an empire as it facilitates global free trade over the entire globe, even between its rivals, rather than attempting to monopolize value-added transformations of raw materials. You can tell that it's not a traditional wealth pump empire by the fact that citizens of its client nations enjoy higher standards of living than citizens in the supposedly privileged nation-state at the center of the empire. This is largely because the guiding principle of the USA on the world stage for half a century was to contain the Soviet Union. Now that the USSR is no more, the US is withdrawing from its international commitments, but not cleanly or decisively. If Pax Americana is going to endure for more than a few more decades, it will need to learn to conduct itself like a proper Empire and stop responding to every little provocation and start using its status to redirect a greater share of wealth to its home population.
I was not aware that client states of the US enjoy a higher standard of living, except maybe Qatar and a few other Opec nations, but I am not very knowledgable about this. I thought that until recently (with Qatar modernizing) the US consumed more resources per capita than anyone else. The 5% of the world's population which lives in the US consumed about a quarter of the world's energy, and a third of the world's material resources. Lately things have been going downhill for the US, for sure, due to several factors including dwindling oil reserves and competition from Russia and China and Opec countries.
Why are you advocating for a "proper" (i.e. more violent, extractive, totalitarian) empire? Is it because you see that capitalism by itself is not a sufficient wealth pump, and has leveling, democratizing aspects? You didn't respond to my (non-Marxist) critique of capitalism. Is it because if you only had a choice between capitalism (with the nasty features I outlined in my response above, as well as its beneficial wealth distributing and creating features), and totalitarianism at a global level (as aspired to by the US's competitors), you would choose the latter, if the US became more totalitarian?
Someone left the word salad out of the fridge again!
Seriously, @aaron faes, some punctuation might help you make your point better. Absent a period or comma now and then, I can't make much sense of this.